


Janus

by christchex



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Experimental Style, M/M, Trauma, working towards a resolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22457989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christchex/pseuds/christchex
Summary: Alex sleeps, or he lays in the dark unaware. Michael dreams and brings himself together as he falls apart.a remix
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 17
Kudos: 39
Collections: RNM Fanfic Remix 2020





	Janus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ninhursag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Erinyes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20631101) by [ninhursag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag). 



> Written for the RNM Remix Challenge 2020. Thank you ninshursag for writing wonderful things that are so outside my comfort zone. I hope you appreciate this alternate look into your fic and how I saw Michael during this little timestamp.

Michael sleeps.

**Here (Hidden)/When (Between)**

“We shouldn’t have done that,” Alex breaks through the silence of the cabin.

There was no noise, no electric buzz, no fan in the background. Even nature itself is silent, as if in reverence for this moment before they finally shatter. Michael feels the silence like a weight, unnatural and foreign after the steady beat of his blood rushing through his ears and the echoing of Alex’s screams and the surety that this was the end of everything. He feels Alex’s words as if the entire universe has fallen on him again and all Michael can do is continue to shoulder the burden, an intergalactic Atlas. Or shatter under it, finally, as the weight of everything settles on his body, settles as his sweat cools and Alex lays on the far side of the bed telling him the same thing he always does.

You thought, after all this, maybe it would be different? Michael berates himself, his foolish hope that breaking himself for Alex would have been enough.

> _ You can feel him _ , a voice whispers as he hears Alex shift on the bed to turn towards him.  _ You can feel him and he can feel you. _

Michael has a memory in his head of a thousand lifetimes and an echo of a maybe life, two faces the exact same and different beyond recognition.

> _ I am in your head and he is in your skin. What do we both say? _

Michael turns over to look at Alex. Alex with his hand print glowing bright on his chest, the glow the only real light in the room. He cannot see Alex, nothing more than a faint shadow from the kaleidoscope of light that illuminates his skin. He cannot see his face, the slight turn of his lips and his eyebrows as the wrinkle in confusion and displeasure. He can’t see the look, but he has seen it so many times, almost as many times as past lives going through his head. Alex, finally looking at him while Michael looks back as he tells him ‘No’.

> _ Look again. _

Michael focuses on Alex. Face pressed into the pillow, Michael only sees him out of the corner of his eye, iridescent glow hits a chin, a jawline Michael has kissed and kissed and imagined punching only once when he thought life could never bring him lower.

The universe settles a little more on his shoulders, pressing him further into a mattress that he never meant to use. He cannot move with the weight of everything, the knowledge in his head spinning out of control, himself too close to the stars and melting and freezing for it.

Alex’s head tilts and Michael realizes that he’s asleep, has been for a while because Alex does not fall asleep quickly, hasn’t as far as Michael can remember. He doesn’t know about  _ before _ but he knows about every single  _ after _ and he knows that this one changes nothing.

Michael tries not to think about what exactly it says about him, about them, that his mind automatically fills in Alex’s rejection.

“It’s the trauma,” Alex’s voice whispers, and Michael jolts up before his brain reminds him that no, Alex is not awake, not speaking.

Trauma. That’s nothing new in life at least. This kind of trauma is though, the ache of his body and his head and his soul? That all encompassing pain rips him apart, plummets him down deep into a spiral, into the sea. Michael ignores his thoughts, ignores how wrong they feel for him. He’s been poetic before, wrenched out his heart for Alex so many times, for the others he loves and loved. But this?

> _ We’ve always been like this _ , the voice says. Michael feels the warmth of the sun in the dead of night, the warmth of a smile when there wouldn’t be a smile on him face for a while.

His body throbs. If he closes his eyes, he can feel the answering thrum of Alex’s body, would even if he wasn’t a foot away.

Another shared trauma, more matching baggage.

> _ It’s not the same _ , the voice argues.  _ We are not the same as we once were.  _

Neither is Alex, Michael knows. Over a decade later, and they are so far removed from the kids they were. Over a decade later and Michael stills feels as if he’s transported to the past when he sees Alex. Alex smiling, Alex bloody, Alex crying and begging him to leave, begging him to save himself even as Michael sees the torture Alex endures.

“You endure so much,” Alex’s voice whispers again, echoing in Michael’s ears, in his chest, vibrating so deep that Michael is not sure he actually feels it, just his mind reminding him just what Alex can do to him. 

> _ He is in our head, under our skin. _

Michael does not like this, the ‘we’ he’s suddenly become, as if his body is no longer his own, no longer in control in a way that never happened with his vices, not with drinking, not with acetone, not with sex, with violence.

Violence. Trauma. Michael lays on a bed he’s not sure he’ll ever get used to and ignores the pulsing in his body that signals too many things, signals a fall he’s not too sure he can recover from this time. He’s been beaten, battered, destroyed so many times.

> _ That is not us anymore _ , the voice whispers, assures him in the dead of the night.

Michael lays in bed and ignores how he has no concept of time, how he can’t see anything beyond the glow of  _ his _ mark on Alex, a cover up and another piece of himself given away. They both begged, still beg and will beg, for things that they know will hurt, for things that could damage. Michael lets himself feel Alex next to him, the steady stream of his emotions- anxiety, desperation, love and love and love- and tries to imagine what Alex got from him, before, earlier, as he begged for a touch that didn’t demand, that didn’t demean, that cared and that loved and that soothed.

> _ It was the same. We are desperate. We are scared. We will prevail. _

Michael feels more than hears the echo of  _ We love _ that tears through his ears, into his veins, straight to his heart.

“You love him too?” Michael whispers in the dark, the sound going no further than his own ears. The words do not echo on the walls, do not bounce off the ceiling back at him. It’s as if he never says them at all.

> _ We love. _ The voice confirms.

Michael imagines that the being inside of him tears it out of himself, the way Michael has a thousand times before, tear at the wounds of love and expose himself for all to see, for the birds to pick at for eternity, for  _ Michael _ to pick at a prod, to unravel himself until the end of time.

> _ We love, _ the voice says again.  _ You cannot remove me from you. We. We. _

Michael tries to shake his head but nothing moves, not a single curl twitches as he‘s stuck still in the dark, in the silence, in the sound and fury of his own mind. He’s stuck still in the night and the terrors never come truly, just the continued awareness of lives come undone. Michael stays still, rigid, until his muscles relax and the terror passes and he turns onto his side again, eyes fixed on Alex, with his hand print bright on his chest. The silence of the night calms until it’s the break after a storm, until intergalactic Atlas breathes again against his burden and goes about his life, until nature returns to soundtrack his dreams.

> _ We begin. _

Michael sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wanted to present a different Rath. It seemed that he and Alex had an understanding by the climax of the action, so I wanted Michael to work his way there. Unfortunately, dear darling Michael is messed up. So, they're working on it.  
> Janus, Roman god of beginnings, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings, a two-faced god looking both to the future and the past.


End file.
